Fun, rhythmic, informative, and worthy of many happy read-aloud moments.
Mushrooms, lichens, yeasty bread, too. Are your salad and breadsticks—alive?
Beneath its sensationalistic title, this is a truly delightful rhyming book about the wonderful surprises that await us in nature. Author Keller brings alive the woods with a second-person text addressed at a bespectacled, elementary-age child whose walk along a woodland path is soon fraught with unexpected visitors. “You crouch to look. / You're shocked to see / its cap…its stalk…its gills! / A fungus grows / among us now— / so strange it gives you chills.” Soon the kid is noticing all types of fungus, from mushrooms to mold to spores. Illustrator Salcedo provides art that is the perfect blend of humor and information. She uses bold primary colors and adorable expressiveness to highlight not only the human character (a brown-skinned kid with exuberantly bushy hair), but the myriad plants, veggies, and other living things, both microscopic and visible to the naked eye, the kid encounters. In addition to the snappy verse, Keller offers discreet, prose interjections of science—perfect for young readers with a penchant to know a little bit more. The sweet little science asides offer clearly explained insight into microscopic life forms affecting our lives. The book closes with a three-page interview with a mycologist and a bibliography.
Fun, rhythmic, informative, and worthy of many happy read-aloud moments. (Picture book. 5-10)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1943147-64-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: The Innovation Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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